It was a dark and stormy night...just kidding. Well actually it was stormy, but it wasn't dark. Ship 5678 headed out on the first overnight trip in the history of Seward Sea Exploring. The plan was to go to Aialik Bay and to anchor up in one of the coves for ONE night. I don't remember which cove it was, but we anchored up and took a small dinghy into shore. We hiked up the beach to a small park service cabin and checked things out. Then we went back to the beach and had a snowball fight. Later that night back on the boat, the 120' Kenai Explorer, we discussed the seven steps of survival and went over our ship business.

The next day we woke up some time in the afternoon and prepared to return to Seward. We got a weather report that said to expect 20' seas and high winds around Cape Aialik. Aialik is an Indian word that means scary or dangerous. We tried to make it around the cape, but decided to turn back. We were told that we would probably stay the night and that all we had to eat was some left over hot dogs. Later that night around 5:00 we heard that the winds had gone down a little and that the seas could be down to about 15'. So after filling stomachs with the delicious morels we headed back around the cape.

As we rounded the cape the domino effect began. One explorer after another began to lose their hot dogs. Out of about 30 people only 8 were able to hold the hot dogs down. We had one explorer that was extremely sick and went out on the back deck to get some fresh air. He forgot to dress for the outdoors though and suffered a mild case of hypothermia. The only ones that didn't get sick were the skipper and first mate and about six explorers that were jumping with the waves at the forward part of the main cabin.

Once we made it around the cape and headed back into the bay we took a short break at one of the island coves to get things cleaned up before we finished our journey. Most people went home that day feeling like they never wanted to step on a boat again, they all did, but at the time it wasn't really their high on their list of fun things to do. The rest of us went home overly excited about the awesome adventure we had just been on.

I may have left some of the details out or made some mistakes so if you were on this adventure let me know what to add or change.

 

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